infoTECH Feature

February 24, 2012

Kitware Unveils Open-Source Bioinformatics Application - Visomics

In 2009, 19,506 commercial physical research establishments were in operation in the United States, employing 312,804 people and earning a combined $40.4 billion in revenue, quoted a source.

In an effort to provide a tool that helps in accelerating the pace of research through definition of relationships between biological analytes and biomarkers, Kitware – a technology company – has unveiled an open-source bioinformatics application, Visomics.

Visomics helps in the exploration of biological omics data with a focus on genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics. This flexible, user-friendly, end-to-end software solution incorporates data ingestion, analysis and visualization tasks for a variety of data types and sizes.

Currently, visualization tools are being used to help interpret protein interaction, gene expression, metabolic profile data and other omnic data in general. Visomics delivers the statistical methods, intuitive visualizations, and pre-existing chemical pathway diagrams that biologists require for tracking, storage, analysis and evaluation of relationships and behaviors of large numbers of analytes and biomarkers.

Built on Kitware’s open-source toolkits, Visomics can be customized to meet the particular needs of researchers. It will enable more widespread use of omics data and ultimately lead to quality personalized medicine.

Designed to be user-friendly for use by bioinformatics experts and non-experts alike, Visomics facilitates clinical researchers to research deep into the areas of reproductive and perinatal health, cardiovascular disorders and breast cancer. Precisely, it can be easily configured to support underlying omics applications.

Currently in alpha/beta mode, Visomics is supported by SBIR phase I funding from the National Institute of Health. It is developed, as well as maintained by, Kitware, the Hamner Institute for Health Sciences, the University of Washington, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

According to Kitware, it has made contributions in the areas of visualization, data management, medical imaging, quality software process, computer vision, and informatics.

“We are excited to see how Visomics impacts the field of biological research,” said Wesley Turner, principal investigator, in a statement. “With Visomics, workflows can be streamlined allowing researchers to focus on the data and make new discoveries.”

In recent news, Kitware had announced that it will be collaborating with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a facility of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), for the deployment and delivery of software processes support for the Radiance (News - Alert) Project.






Edited by Jennifer Russell
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